London: Death of one of US president John F Kennedy`s mistresses, Mary Pinchot Meyer, has mystified conspiracy theorists for years.
However, a new book has claimed that the beautiful divorcee, who was close friends with the Kennedys and is widely known for having a lengthy affair with the playboy president, was shot in a cover-up operation by the CIA.
According to the book, socialite Mary, in her preoccupation with her lover’s assassination and consequent personal investigation, may have gotten so close to the ‘truth’ that the CIA found her to be a threat.
Consequently, agency operatives staged a shooting to make it look like she died due to a sexual assault that turned violent, alleges the book by Peter Janney, called Mary`s Mosaic: The CIA Conspiracy to Murder John F Kennedy, Mary Pinchot Meyer, and Their Vision of World Peace.
Irrespective of whether the theory is true or not, there are a number of questionable components to the story of the months leading up to her death on October 12, 1964.
Her ex-husband, Cord Meyer, was a CIA agent himself and the couple were card-carrying members of Georgetown’s starry social set, which included then-Senator John F Kennedy and his wife Jacqueline, the Daily Mail reported.
The couples became close friends, along with Mary`s sister Antoinette (who went by Tony) and her husband Ben Bradlee.
Another couple that they spent time with was Mary’s Vassar classmate Cicely d`Autremont and her husband James Angleton, who was the chief of the counter surveillance for the CIA.
The author has even claimed that the socialite would frequently bring marijuana and LSD to her trysts with the president.
During their conversations while on these hallucinogens, Mary reportedly tried to appeal to Kennedy`s pacifist nature and requested him to seek peaceful solutions to such worldwide crises like the Cold War and the Cuban missile crisis.
At the time, LSD was not illegal, and many, including Harvard professor Timothy Leary, advocated its use as they believed it helped people expand their knowledge base.
Janney’s book is not the first to draw conclusions between Mary`s friendship with Leary and her intentions with her relationship with Kennedy.
He went on to say that she was later murdered by the CIA, who he believes organised the assassination of the president in an effort to stop him from preventing violent escalation that they wanted in the Cold War.
Though The Huffington Post believed that the book depended largely on substantial assumptions, these theories have been in existence for some time.
One question lies in the existence- and retrieval- of her diary that comprised writings about her affair with president Kennedy.
Within a day of her murder, Bradlee went over to her home to find the diary and, though the door was locked, he found Angleton.
The CIA spymaster insisted that he also was looking for the diary but claimed that it was because his wife- Mary`s friend- had asked him to.
The whereabouts of the diary today are vague.
Another clue erring on the side of the conspiracy is that while her ex-husband included a statement of support for the police investigation of her murder, his assistant purportedly said that it was a lie and he did truly believe it to be a standard ``in house rub out``.
In an interview shortly before his death in 2001, Mr Meyer said that ``the same sons of b****es that killed John F Kennedy`` killed his ex-wife.
Police arrested Robert Crump, a man who was found near the scene of the crime, but had no connection to the murder weapon, which was never found, or any prior history with Mary.
ANI
